[J-core] Avnet LX9 microboard support & programming?

[Rich Felker]

On Tue, Aug 30, 2016 at 02:02:02PM -0400, Geoff Salmon wrote:
> On 16-08-30 01:19 PM, Rich Felker wrote:
> >Unfortunately however I can't find any good way to write to the SPI
> >flash without the Digilent sfutil which seems to be Windows-only. I
> >was only able to boot the new bitstream by programming it directly
> >onto the FPGA with the Digilent djtgcfg utility, which has to be done
> >every time you boot. Anybody else have one of these boards and know
> >how to write to the flash?
> 
> You can also use xilinx's impact tool connected to the microboard
> either with a jtag cable or through the microboard's USB-JTAG
> circuitry using a plugin from digilent (https://reference.digilentinc.com/reference/software/digilent-plugin-xilinx-tools/start).
> 
> I've previously been able to write the flash using impact with the
> digilent plugin using a file write_flash.cmd containing the
> following:
> 
> setMode -bs
> setCable -target "digilent_plugin"
> Identify -inferir
> identifyMPM
> attachflash -position 1 -spi "N25Q128"
> assignfiletoattachedflash -position 1 -file "microboard9.mcs"
> Program -p 1 -dataWidth 4 -spionly -e -v -loadfpga
> quit
> 
> and then running "impact -batch write_flash.cmd" in a directory with
> containing both write_flash.cmd and microboard9.mcs.

Ah, that sounds like a workable solution for most users. It's not so
friendly to my setup where I have ISE installed on a completely
different (and physically isolated) system from where the board and
USB ports to program it are.

One way to make this work without any specialized knowledge of the
protocols used (but a lot more work than I want to do) would be to
upload a special FPGA bitstream via djtgcfg whose only job is to write
the flash.

Rich